Recent reading in photography has, as might be expected, led me to some art I had not seen. I know very little about visual art, and last night I saw Franz Marc’s painting, The Fate of the Animals (click for large version), for the first time. Marc is considered to be one of the principle artists of the German Expressionist movement.
He died a soldier in the First World War. This painting, which he had made before the war, was later sent to him as a postcard. After receiving it, he wrote his wife:
It is like a premonition of this war, horrible and gripping; I can hardly believe that I painted it!…It is artistically logical to paint such pictures before wars, not as dumb reminiscences afterward…
I too found the image gripping, and it reminded me of Peter Howson.
I am not very good at making clever statements about war. This drawing is the first idea that came into my head. This is the face of the monster of War which feeds on human flesh. It is death.
Howson, who was commissioned to go to Bosnia during their civil war, was speaking about this drawing:
No punchline. Just thought I’d share.
floor: n
1: [Common Use] The part of the unit in which the patients spend their time. As opposed to the nurses’ station (fishbowl) or therapy rooms.
“What are you doing out here on the floor with a college degree?”
______
Lakeside Behavioral Health System: n
abbrev. Lakeside
1: [Common Use] The psychiatric hospital I worked in right after college.
2: [Advertising] The premier provider of specialized behavioral health and addictive disease services in the Memphis and mid-south region.
3: [Advertising] A place of possibilities.
“Sorry guys. Can’t make it tonight. I have to work at Lakeside in the morning.”
______
Universal Health Services: n
abbrev. UHS
1: [Common Use] The corporation that owns the psychiatric hospital I worked in right after college.
2: [Advertising] One of the nation’s largest and most respected healthcare management companies, operating through its subsidiaries, acute care hospitals, behavioral health facilities and ambulatory centers nationwide and in Puerto Rico.
“The UHS strategy is to build or purchase healthcare properties in rapidly-growing markets and create a strong franchise based on exceptional service and effective cost control.” [emphasis added]
The East Unit was kept secure by three sets of electromagnets. In the absence of a 9-10 key or person to press the button inside the nurses’ fishbowl, only a great amount of inertia would open the doors attached thereto. Even then, one set lead only to the West Unit, another set downstairs, and the third to the elevator. All routes eventually collided with more electromagnets, whose freedom signal was a sharp Click. They were the facticity of space made abundantly and audibly clear.
East was a designation left over from the building in which the unit was previously housed, and it seemed to lend a sense of pride to some patients, who would chant “East Siiiiiide” in the morning before breakfast or as a farewell upon being discharged. Manuel M didn’t bother with these chants, though he did nod politely or wave an unassuming goodbye to other patients and staff as they left. I always admired Manuel M. Looking back on that time, he was one of the sanest people I knew. Manuel was a patient on the Adult Acute unit in a psychiatric hospital, and I was what corporate beureaucrats and healthcare professionals alike call a “community counselor.” That means orderly.
Manuel M was about five eleven. He was muscular, but a small belly exposed his middle age, which one might not have divined otherwise. He had clear skin, and his dark brown face was neither wrinkled nor scarred. Manuel generally carried a serious look on his face, though that hardly set him apart from anyone else on East. What did set him apart was a trait only he and a few others on the unit posessed, restraint. Let it not be doubted in an appropriately contemporary way. Let it not be mitigated by the overwhelming facticity of human existence. Let it not be tarnished by his subconscious desires or normative presuppositions. If this story has a hero, it is Manuel M. Of course that’s not his real name. You won’t find any real names here.
There were adult units other than East, which was for the most acute patients. Dual III was dedicated to addiction recovery, and West was for patients who fit somewhere between East and Dual III. Finally there was Gero, the geriatric unit.
Gero patients had a wide range of diagnoses, and they were together because they were frail or vulnerable. As it happened, Gero was also the least crowded unit. It had its own cafeteria, a television room, a lounge, a group therapy room, one men’s hall, one women’s hall, and a garden for walking. It was also one of the older buildings. In the center stood the nurse’s station, a circular desk with rolling chairs, computers, and medical charts. It was much like a concierge desk, but in a psychiatric hospital. Unlike the East and West nurse’s station, Gero’s was not encased with glass from waist level up. It was open, but sets of electromagnetically-controlled doors did close off the men’s and women’s hallways. These intersected the station at a right angle from each other. If you were to look past the nurse’s station from the Men’s hallway, you would see another hall. This housed the lounge, therapy room, and one more room not exclusively for Gero patients: the ECT room. To the layman this is known as shock therapy.
At the end of the women’s hallway was a set of doors that lead outside. A 9-10 key would invoke the freedom sound Click and release the doors to the back entrance of the main building, where East and West were.
East and West were side by side. In fact, geographically they might as well have been two parts of the same unit. West was large, with one hallway for men; one for women; a large common room in between; and therapy rooms, a laundry room, and the Head Nurse’s office attached to the common room. East was much smaller. It had only one hallway and a similarly open common room with attached therapy rooms and one isolation room. Why they reserved the smallest space for the most violent patients I will never understand. East was a pressure cooker. In between East and West, as a kind of nexus, was one set of electromagnetic doors and the nurse’s station. Waist down was drywall. Waist up was glass. That’s why they called it the fishbowl. At the end of the West Unit’s men’s hall and the East Unit’s only hall were smoking patios.
Every morning at 6:37, I put my 9-10 key into the wall
Click
and entered the main building by the door near the cafeteria. I walked up the stairs through the West Unit and into the fishbowl. I put my lunch in the refrigerator and a pair of latex gloves in my back left pocket. Then I sat down and waited for the Charge Nurse’s report on the previous shift. At 3:22 I retraced my steps, inserting the 9-10 key again into the wall near the cafeteria.
Click
Working title for my novel that isn’t actually a novel and never will be:
The Electromagnetic Paper Machine (not to be confused with the title of a real novel by Ken Kesey, who also wrote about a mental hospital)
I wanted to write a novel like Kurt Vonnegut wrote novels. That is, good. I wanted it to be Timequake, Steppenwolf, and The Jungle in one go. I’ve never read The Jungle. I wanted it to be a coming-of-age story with relevant social commentary and almost religious power, a real screamer. Of course I was to come of age, but in my own defense I was an asshole in this novel, the novel I never wrote. You would have related to me just enough to not quit paying attention. Just like El Túnel but tricky though because the actual main character, the hero, was a mental patient. I can’t use his real name. I wish I could. It’s a good name for him, but to tell you would be both illegal and unethical. There was another hero, a beautiful girl who loved me. There were a lot of casualties. There was at least one genuine villain, the hospital.
I should say the corporation that runs the hospital.
Chiefest of my motives in this endeavor: publicly telling off that corporation, coming clean about mistakes of my early adulthood, and honoring people that deserve it. But I can’t write fiction. I can’t hide in the ambiguity of creative truth. I can’t immortalize my friends into epic characters (I do see you all as epic, by the way). As if that weren’t enough of a kick in the nuts, I can’t tell closely-guarded secrets and then act like I made them up. I’ll just have to find a therapist or a girlfriend who speaks either English or Spanish or both. Sucks for y’all because there were some steamy scenes in there.
I think the English teachers at my prep school are responsible for the desire to do all of this with a book. I see them now in my mind, in the teachers’ lounge, behind closed office doors. Norm Thompson and Terry Shelton are conspiring to create generations of kunstroman writers. It’s a simple formula, mathematical almost. Put boys together. Be firm but not strict. Subject them to endless coming-of-age stories while they themselves are coming of age. Of course Dr.’s Baer and Harkins are there, and Eric Berman too. In the offices or teachers’ lounge I mean. They are drinking cheap coffee with cream and sugar. Shelton is wearing a tweed jacket, half-sitting on a desk, explaining a small but important detail about Caddie Compson’s role in all this. I can hear the cadences of his voice. Berman is paying very close attention, his brow furrowed. Curt Schmitt is in on the plan but can’t make the meetings. He is too closely watched by the students, who believe he has magical powers. “Mr. Schmitt doesn’t walk. He floats.” I think all of the teachers, staff, and administration were in on it. Wayne Duff, John Hiltonsmith, Barry Ray, Loyal Murphy, Beba Heros. It’s just that Thompson and Shelton were the vanguard.
Then I went to a Midwestern liberal arts college. “Hemingway wrote about Wabash,” Curt Schmitt said as he handed me copied pages from In Our Time. Ezra Pound even taught there, but they fired him. He wasn’t traditional enough.
But my novel. My novel had a point too, a lesson. Nay, even a solution to the problems of ethical justification caused by Post-Modern thought! Right, Al. It’s the lesson from El Túnel: Que no seas insensato. Don’t be insensate. It sounds kind of dumb and vague and is also the most important lesson of my life thus far. In El Túnel, the protagonist, Juan Pablo Castel, meets a woman, María Ibarne, and begins a romance. She warns him that she can’t be fully his. He finds out she’s married to a blind man and having another affair. She’s not selfish though. She’s actually very compassionate. Her motives are unclear. What is clear is that she understands Castel better than anyone else. His angst over not being able to posses her completely grows. Towards the end, he vengefully tells her husband about the affairs. The husband already knew, and beats Castel about the head, scolding him, yelling “¡Insensato!” Insensate.
I probably make of this scene not what it was intended to mean. In fact, until recently I had forgotten an important detail about the plot order. Castel has already killed María when he informs her husband (of everything). At this moment in the novel, which has falsely resonated with me for a long time, Castel’s crime is not merely informing on his mistress, it’s murder. For my purposes that doesn’t matter. It means that I can’t really credit this lesson to El Túnel, but rather to a flaw in my memory. That’s fine.
No seas insensato. This is the lesson I would have had myself, the hospital, everyone but the heroes learn. The novel won’t be written, but I will tell you some of the stories that it was to tell. I hope the point becomes clearer as I go.
Last week an old friend asked me, “What’s going on over there? You’ve stopped writing.” Well, that’s both true and untrue. I’ll lay it out for you straight. I have no talent for fiction. Still, let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.
This Winter saw a lot of boredom in Jejudo. November fourteenth was the last day one could reasonably go for a walk. I made it to Gwan Got and watched the waves against the rocks, hoping that each swell would be louder and wetter than the last. I tasted the spray on my lips. Gwan Got is the part of the shoreline closest to the mainland, North. It’s also dangerous for boats. There’s no beach there, just a plain of volcanic rocks. At high tide many of them are covered, but if you give it a shot you can walk to the edge and look out on the ocean. November fourteenth was no day for that. The wind was too strong.
By December fourth the ocean was an icy cage. Hamdeok is fourty minutes by bus from the coffee shops and bars of City Hall. The last ride back leaves at 9:30, which meant a lot of dead time in Ocean Love Pension. On December fifth I tried meditation. By December ninth I had bought a car.
Mobility is great, but it didn’t dull the cold. I started writing. Fiction felt unnatural. I am comfortable with travel narratives and essays, but in this I had no idea where to start. Mike Abbot once told me that Arthur Miller began by copying Shakespeare on a typewriter. I re-read The Sound and the Fury and resolved to copy Quentin’s section, word for word, by hand.
I played guitar for three hours every day, I learned to sing, I wrote a few poems, I thought and thought and thought, and I put poor Quentin Compson’s final hours to paper. My handwriting has improved.
Still no presentable fiction. A few sentences, a paragraph. Nope, too cliche. Nope, this dialogue is bad. The novel was to be about the mental hospital I worked in right after college. It was to expose patient mistreatment. Many of you know that I was called last year to be a witness in a civil trial against this former employer. The trial, as far as I know, has not come to pass. The charges involved the rape of an elderly woman. It is my strongly-held conviction that the hospital is at fault, paperwork factory that it is.
But I’m no Upton Sinclair for our generation. I can’t fictionalize those experiences convincingly, only relate them plainly. On May fifteenth 2010, nearly one year after my separation from Corporate America, I woke up and decided to be a photojournalist. Within a week I was shooting and writing for a local paper. Thunderous internal applause.
There’s much to be done. By my reckoning I can stay on this island, teaching three hours a day, for fourteen more months, after which I am no longer eligible for the TaLK program (anyone care to join until then?). That puts me right under halfway through this part of my life. Jesus, Al, took you long enough to get your shit together. I know. I know. I went to Seoul for a photography competition two weeks ago, last week read four-hundred pages worth of photography books, and yesterday shot for an article. Fourteen months remain in my own, personal, Jejudo Photojournalism College. So that’s the news. Oh, and it’s warm again. And I won a surfboard. The next few posts are already written. I’m still going to tell you about the hospital, just not as I had first intended.
Ok, so I realize as much as the next person that there are few things more tedious than having to read mediocre poetry. So, to both of you, if you came here for something else, you’ll have to wait a while longer.
This is my fourth completed poem, and it took so long that I am compelled to publish it. This because I don’t think it’s going to show up in an anthology any time soon. Knowledge of the myth of Persephone (pronounced Persephonee) is a prerequisite. Oh, and it will help to look up Tantalus too. In the version I read as a child, Persephone soothed him by holding water to his mouth and gathering fruit from the trees above him.
Winter Poem
Winter is a pomegranate seed
half-eaten and discarded
despised by Persephone
changed at once from bright crimson trophy
conquered, soiled, then left abandoned
shamefully bearing its history.
Tantalus said “Here. Seed. She ate.
She will not leave us now.
We will be happy.”
as Demeter’s pretty progeny flew absolutely terrified
through corridors and corridors
of washed-out portrait memories.
This I ponder, scraping ice from my windshield
or holding bare legs over sun-scorched leather seats.
How when one hope’s commitment oppresses
the other’s extremes seem serene.
Perhaps she agreed, learning to covet her husband Hades,
and longing for shade in the depths of Summer heat
like me dreaming of frost during fitful feverish sleep.
So I look in pity every time I see a scorned seed.
I, for one, thank poor Pluto and truly love Persephone.
It was her pain that made the world gray
and only her pain that again makes it green.
-AO IV
Dear friends,
Things have been very busy lately. After a harrowing and educational trip to China I went to Seoul to lecture the new generation of TaLK (Teach and Learn in Korea) scholars. Afterwords, the Jejudonians had our own orientation, once more at the Hotel Robero in Jeju-si. I have just now returned. In the mean time production levels as far as music and writing go have been off the charts. It’s just that there’s nothing quite ready for this forum.
Incidentally I’ve been writing poetry. I’m no Auden, but it is fun. I realize I promised fiction. On the way. Until then, here’s a little number I wrote in Shanghai. True story.
Shanghaid
I woke up on a Shanghai train
to grinning eyes across the way
which looked at me as if to say
you are a surprise, and so is today.
-AO IV
Dear readers, both of you,
A certain amount of hyperbole can be good for enjoyable non-fiction. Up to this point, everything written here has been more or less true. The only possible departures have been hyperbolic in nature. That however, will end. I have been posting not just to please my tiny readership, but also to better my writing skills.
For the past six weeks I have been working on a novel. In order to improve my fiction writing I will need practice outside of a main project. Of course they say write what you know, so you can expect everything here to have at least some autobiographical element.
As for what I write about music, it won’t be fiction. Everything about Korea you can expect to be true in spirit. That is, I won’t make up traditions, culture, places, or their character. Though I may not capture the specific people exactly I will try to capture the place and time.
I also do this to free myself from preserving reputations. I can say what I want, and nobody will know who it is about. It might not be about anyone. My friends and acquaintances will be shielded, and you get to read more interesting stories. For close friends back home, just ask and you shall receive the truth. Hell, I’ve probably told you already.
I will mark some things as Fiction, others as Non-fiction. Most things will be marked as both. Incidentally I’ve been writing music over here as well, so you can expect that to be posted once I’ve recorded it to my satisfaction. Perhaps I’ll split this into multiple pages, one for fiction, one for non-fiction, and one for music. Time will tell. In any case, I hope this doesn’t turn either of you off to the writing. I think the end result will be more entertaining.
Cheers,
AO IV
It’s hard to write about Hamdeok. Hamdeok is heaven. How do you describe heaven? It was more like hell at first. I guess that’s what Korea is to me, hell become heaven.
In Shelby County, going East on interstate 40, there is an underpass just before Exit 20. The bridge above is, in my mind anyway, the outer limit of Memphis. It is from there that as adolescents Robbie Caldwell and I used to wave at cars passing underneath. We were unabsorbed in the complications of adult life. We had no cell phones and no cars. We had never kissed a girl, though we often talked about it. The children in my classes remind me of that time, a time when saying hello to strangers was the best way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Less than a mile from exit 20 sits the psychiatric hospital I worked in just after college. I arrived at 6:37 every morning and swiped my key card, waiting for the “click” that the electromagnetic locks made upon being released. These were just some of the ghosts I left behind. Past the P & H, past Memphis University School, past the Summer Ave. drive-in theater (Rocky Horror on Halloween), past Bellevue Baptist I drove. Past the translucent inhabitants of my memory. Old lives upon old lives. In Nashville I gave my Jeep to Garrett and with it the only key I still owned. There were no more locks for me to open in the U.S.A.
This was after my Southern Tour 2009 of course. I had first left Memphis on July 29th, headed to New Orleans, Louisiana for a last hurrah with old friends. Then to Mobile to see my dad, then Atlanta for my Visa, then again Memphis for a few hours. I loaded the Jeep with a backpack, suitcase, and guitar. Then it was Nashville, Paducah, Chicago, Incheon, Suwon, Seoul, Jejusi, and finally Hamdeok. I was exhausted, completely worn out. My only greeting was a hotel bed with a neon orange cross outside one small window. Disco Golgotha in the middle of nowhere.
After ten days I moved into an apartment on the second floor of Ocean Love pension. That’s when the gravy started coming.
They tell me Hamdeok was nothing five years ago. They tell me Jejudo was nothing twenty years ago. Like I said, build build build. Hamdeok has four grocery stores, one bank, three pizza places, four saunas, two resort hotels, one of the best beaches on the island, and an amusement park. Ocean Love pension is actually for weekend getaways, but some times the landlord, who calls me “Songsangnim” (teacher in Korean), takes in semi-permanent renters. On Summer and Fall evenings I played guitar on my balcony and watched the weekly batch of warriors from the mainland wander in and out of my pink, six-story building. On Monday morning everyone showered and flew back. This lead to a noticeable dearth of hot water and a slightly disheveled English teacher on the first day of the week.
Most visitors to Hamdeok are Korean, but there are the occassional Russians, Chinese, Japanese, and Westerners. One evening I heard a Korean couple fighting overhead. The woman was screaming so loudly I feared for her safety. I ran downstairs to get my landlord, urgently banging on his door. He followed me upstairs to listen. He smiled, said “couple,” and went back down. That was the first couple of many. Koreans have a higher tolerance for fighting than we do. Of course they don’t invade other countries either.
Right now Ocean Love is empty but for the landlord and me. Hamdeok, fat and boisterous with excess residents during the Summer, is now gaunt and subdued. The beaches are covered with nylon netting to prevent the sand from being blown away. The amusement park is unlit but for one hanging bulb in the corrugated steel shack wherein sleeps the caretaker. The yellow tents that line the shore have been stripped of their plastic covering. Only aluminum skeletons remain. I keep my windows shut tightly, but the wind gets through.
If you walk West from Ocean Love you will leave town and pass a Samgyetang restaurant with a small blue sailboat atop which sits a table. When Spring comes we will eat on that boat. If you continue be careful not to stay right along the shoreline. That’s not a public road, but a private street with a guard dog. On November 14th I mistook one for the other in an iPod and Wes-Anderson-soundtrack-induced haze. I saw the dog just in time to be out of the reach of his chain. I did an abrupt about face and half laughing, half hair on end, followed the public road, which leads to the Northernmost point of the island.
There was only one day left in the Son Family Vacation. Son Family, that’s what Tanner, Dahee, and I call ourselves. Every good Migook (American) needs a Korean name. Upon hearing that Tanner had one, Teho, I insisted. Dahee named me Eun-Ho. It means “Silver Lake.” Teho means “Big Tiger.” Dahee chose that one for Tanner. They are dating. Of course we needed a last name too because in Korea one is introduced last-name first. Dahee’s surname is Son. We opted to borrow it.
There were more movies to see, but one morning in line had been enough. Besides, we had been out late meeting Sasha’s brother the night befoe. Sasha was one of my best friends in Buenos Aires. She is one half Scottish, one quarter Russian, and one quarter American. Sasha is slender and pretty with long blonde hair, blue eyes, and an inquisitive face. Argentine men called her a goddess, much because of her blonde hair, which is uncommon in the land of colectivos. They’ll also say just about anything to a girl. It’s impressive really. Sorry Sasha. Sasha is now a ski bum. Incidentally, her brother teaches in Korea. He calls himself Sirius Amadori.
Siri came to meet me in front of the McDonald’s at the Kyungsung University subway stop, exit 4. We went to a loud Migook bar and yelled politely at each other over whisky while a cover band played the Kinks and Bob Marley. I was struck hard by American bar culture.
Korean bars are relatively quiet. Small parties of friends meet up for drinks and conversation, occassionally breaking the low hum with an act of restrained boisterousness. This place was an aquarium of carnivorous sea creatures in close quarters. We swam through the multi-colored crowd to a bench covered in faux crimson leather and sat down. In raw animal endeavors, genetic makeup is the primary limiting/liberating factor, determining one’s place in the struggle for prosperity. Homo sapiens have distinct advantages though. Each temporary resident of this underwatering hole had developed personal style as an added weapon. Claws and teeth were replaced with flattering clothes, witty turns of speech, practiced nonchalance, and well-timed eye contact. My shirt collar had been flipped up in the wearing and removal of the coat I bought Friday morning at the Shinsegae shopping center. When I sat down next to Siri with the whisky a girl I hadn’t talked to yet flipped it back down. She turned out to be nice, so I flipped it up again when she wasn’t looking to see what would happen. She flipped it down again. Human sexuality, in this venue anyway, is psychological warfare. It’s what Jim Stephens and Joe Cooper would call a “fuck scene.”
I wasn’t there for battle though, just to meet an old friend’s brother. When I was a child, John Morgret and I would play telephone in the neighborhood pool, going below the surface and yelling as loud as we could face to face to see if we understood what the other was saying. Here in the ocean it sounded about the same but lacking the white background of the pool walls, the three blue tile letters on the bottom (RRP for Raleigh Ridge Park, our subdivision), and the shiny oscillating ceiling of the water. These were replaced by neon Jim Beam advertisements and veneer walls. The smell of chlorine and barbecue switched out for cigarette smoke and perfume, day turned to night.
Siri left early, and I went with the nice girl and her coworkers to a noreabang (Karaoke bar). They were all nice too. I sang Oasis with friendly Brits. Then I went back to the hostel and slept on the balcony.
Our time with the Megabox had ended, so we went to the fish market. I say fish market, but district would be more appropriate. There is a central building at the waterside. The bottom floor, which is the size of a football field, is full of fish tanks. Its floor is perpetually wet, I noticed, as saltwater seeped through my shoes and socks, saying a cold hello to my toes. I have only two pairs of shoes with me. One, hiking boots. The other, Italian dress shoes I bought in Mobile for a %50 discount. The clerk was overjoyed that I bought a nice pair in hard times. A friend of Dahee’s was with us at the market, and the two of them negotiated our lunch as I snapped photographs of tank after tank of red snapper, sea cucumber, dungeoness crab, and more kinds of sea animals than I realized could be eaten. We pointed out individual fish, choosing the heartiest and healthiest looking. Ironically this superior genetic predisposition of theirs resulted in death. I suppose some fish may be smart enough, or nonchalant enough, not to get caught. A man in a yellow apron cut up our fish as we watched. A lady seated us upstairs. Another brought us a rectancular plate of still-moving octopus which we had not ordered. I grabbed a big piece, dipped it in soy sauce and wasabi, and chewed as fast and hard as I could. Then I swallowed it. A few minutes later another lady came by and took it away. It wasn’t free, just an error on the part of our server. The fish was excellent. We ate it raw.
Our final destination was the Nampodong shopping district, just across the street from the fish market. It is a busy maze of alleyways and stores of all kinds that looks and sounds like this:
Walking through Nampodong
At 5pm our plane took off from Busan. The flight was short, just under an hour. We touched down on Jejudo. Home.
